POSIX tried hard to codify existing practice, and only broke new ground where unavoidable (yes, that is after-the-fact standards for you ;-). As Unix code was never exactly the epitome of consistency (for example, original vi(1) returned a completely random exit code, presumably to shave off a few bytes of the executable when that was critical), taken by literally hundreds of different groups, modified according to different agendas, spawned clones (like GNU, there were several others), much was left undefined doto cover all sort of random behaviour.
POSIX tried hard to codify existing practice, and only broke new ground where unavoidable (yes, that is after-the-fact standards for you ;-). As Unix code was never exactly the epitome of consistency (for example, original vi(1) returned a completely random exit code, presumably to shave off a few bytes of the executable when that was critical), taken by literally hundreds of different groups, modified according to different agendas, spawned clones (like GNU, there were several others), much was left undefined do cover all sort of random behaviour.
POSIX tried hard to codify existing practice, and only broke new ground where unavoidable (yes, that is after-the-fact standards for you ;-). As Unix code was never exactly the epitome of consistency (for example, original vi(1) returned a completely random exit code, presumably to shave off a few bytes of the executable when that was critical), taken by literally hundreds of different groups, modified according to different agendas, spawned clones (like GNU, there were several others), much was left undefined to cover all sort of random behaviour.
POSIX tried hard to codify existing practice, and only broke new ground where unavoidable (yes, that is after-the-fact standards for you ;-). As Unix code was never exactly the epitome of consistency (for example, original vi(1) returned a completely random exit code, presumably to shave off a few bytes of the executable when that was critical), taken by literally hundreds of different groups, modified according to different agendas, spawned clones (like GNU, there were several others), much was left undefined do cover all sort of random behaviour.
lang-c